Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [49]
A trip we took to Uganda in the summer of 2005 illustrates my farewell to my old friends Orderly and Predictable. If I felt my life was already like riding wild, foaming rapids in a flimsy boat, all I had to do was go rafting on the Nile River – and over the famous Bujagali Falls – to experience that metaphor in wet, living color.
The trip started as a ministry opportunity. Steven and I, along with some of our children and close friends, headed to Uganda to meet up with missionaries from Far Reaching Ministries. I had been eager to get Show Hope involved if there was orphan care we could do in Uganda.
At the time, a terrorist group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) had been abducting children at night from villages in northern Uganda, killing their parents in front of them, and brainwashing them to serve as child soldiers in the conflict between the LRA and the government of Uganda. Because of this danger in the countryside, whole communities of children would leave their huts before sunset and walk miles to the safety of lighted areas in larger cities. These children were known as “night commuters.” They would sleep in big groups in parking lots, often protected by government troops, and then return home to their villages in the light of day.
Churches had been working in the city of Kitgum, trying to help these children with food, shelter, and the gospel. Steven and Caleb took their guitars and Will took his djembe, an African drum . . . and they did a concert for the night commuter children in a protected parking lot outside of a church in Kitgum.
When we first arrived, it was still daylight and there were no children to be seen. The people at the church had put up a small stage for our guys. While Steven and the boys set up their gear, the rest of us waited and wondered when the night commuters might show up. We had all kinds of candy and hundreds of glow-in-the-dark plastic bracelets for them.
As the sun set, the children began to arrive: one by one, then group by group, and then there were hundreds of them, ranging in age from about three years old to teenagers. Some were tiny, carrying thin rolled mats to sleep on. Most were barefoot. They had walked miles and miles, just to get to a place where they could spend the night in relative safety.
As soon as the kids found out that we had candy and glow-in-the-dark stuff, they flocked around us. As Steven, Caleb, and Will started the music, the children sang along as best they could. They laughed, clapped, and raised their hands in worship to God, and we all felt His presence with us.
Later on this trip, God did give a way for Show Hope to help: we were able to commit funds to build a home for children who had been orphaned by AIDS in Kitgum.
After our visit with the commuter children, we took a side trip to the Nile River. Friends had told us that rafting there was an adventure we had to have. But I had somehow missed the rafting memo and didn’t even have on a bathing suit. I was wearing athletic shorts and a T-shirt, but that was fine with me since I had no intention of getting wet.
Our friends had told us that there are long stretches where you could just lie back and float, taking in the African scenery.
That sounded good.
What nobody bothered to share was that this idyllic float also included a bunch of class 5 rapids at Bujagali Falls.
At the nice, calm place where the rafting company was located, we got our life jackets – I wondered what those were for – and divided into groups of about ten people per raft, including guides. Our family and friends were part of a larger flotilla of eight rafts, each with experienced guides manning the main oars. There were a number of other random